CBI chief’s wisdom: If king immoral,so will be subjects

The CBI Director also put a figure of $500 billion (nearly Rs 24 lakh crore) on the amount of illegal money deposited by Indians in tax havens abroad,claiming that the largest depositors in Swiss banks were Indians.

The CBI said the figure was taken from a Reuters report of July 2011,which talked about the Supreme Court seeking a panel to probe black money.

Singh,who added that there was “no single remedy” against corruption,was speaking at the inauguration of the first interpol global programme on anti-corruption and asset recovery. He becomes the latest officer to take a dig at the government over corruption charges,after Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai and CIC Satyananda Mishra.

Singh cited high-profile cases investigated by the CBI such as the 2G,CWG scams and the probe against Madhu Koda. “In these cases,we find that money is taken to Dubai,Singapore,Mauritius,from where it goes to Switzerland and then British Virgin Islands,Caymen Islands and other such tax havens. For the criminals,all it involves is setting up a few shell companies and then making layered transfers from one account to another in a matter of hours,as there are no boundaries in banking transactions. There is a lack of political will in the leading tax haven.”

Noting that new methods of financial flows and communication technology had made it even easier for the corrupt to conceal stolen wealth,Singh said the battle had to be fought at many levels. “The design of development programmes should provide for more transparency and accountability.”

He acknowledged that the task of anti-corruption authorities was getting more difficult due to “differences in legal systems,high costs in coordinating investigations,inadequate international cooperation and bank secrecy”. “Managing the asset recovery investigation is complex,time-consuming,costly,and most importantly,requires expertise and political will.”

The Interpol programme is the first of its kind,involving investigators from 18 countries,who are learning ways to identify assets arising out of corrupt practices.

Quoting a report from the World Bank,the CBI Director said: “The World Bank estimates the cross-border flow of money from criminal activities, including corruption and tax evasion,to be around US $1.5 trillion annually. Around US $40 billion of this flow is on account of bribes paid to public officials in developing countries. Out of this,the World Bank estimates only US $5 billion in stolen assets has been repatriated over the past 15 years. That leaves a wide gap between the outflow from developing countries and its subsequent repatriation.”